


proving grounds

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Future Fic, Hard-Earned Intimacy, Injury, Late-Stage Issues Regarding Mind Probes, M/M, Memory Loss, Past Mind Control, Past Torture, Redeemed Ben Solo, Regret, Some Hurt Little Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:39:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: What he and Poe shared was fragile at the best of times, predicated on lines in the sand neither of them crossed ever, not when they were furious or hurting or afraid. It was the one boundary they respected and, until now, they’d never so much as broached the possibility of shattering it into the same number of pieces Ben had left Poe’s mind in last time the topic came up.





	proving grounds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [musamihi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/gifts).



Kalonia’s scanner beeped and flashed as she drew it across Poe’s eyes and around the back of his head. A concerned frown deepened the wrinkles around her mouth and she asked again, “You truly cannot remember the last two days,” like this time, Poe might come to his senses and answer differently.

“Sure I do,” Poe said, tight. His gaze found Ben’s, full of annoyance and, beneath it all, fear. _Do something,_ it said. The _you bastard_ was more circumspect, but well heard anyway. But Ben could do nothing except stand there, arms crossed, as Kalonia continued her assessment. In fact, Ben shouldn’t even have been here and wouldn’t have been if Poe hadn’t insisted. “Yesterday it was everything but the kitchen sink day in the mess hall.”

Everything but the kitchen sink day was, in fact, two days ago, but Ben didn’t point that out. Poe was already pissed off. He’d just be more so if he knew he’d missed fresh supplies, huzzah day, too. Not to mention having it rubbed in yet again that he was wrong.

“And I had to sit through a hideously detailed brief for my mission to—” Hissing, he brought his knuckles up to massage his temple. “Fine, those FO fucks did something to me.”

“Broke your ribs and three fingers on your right hand, and left your body riddled with bruises,” Ben said, not that he was cataloguing the wounds, no. He’d just spent a very unpleasant, very productive three hours meditating on his reckless fool of a—partner’s injuries while he’d floated his way, oblivious, through an accelerated bacta tank treatment.

“You’re forgetting the busted eardrum and the dislocated shoulder,” Poe pointed out. “And the giant fucking void where my memory is supposed to be.”

The scanner shrieked in displeasure, a shrill, thin alarm indicating—“Commander Dameron, please don’t—” The alarm died out and Kalonia sighed. “Thank you.”

Poe shrugged and winced, dragging in a deep breath. It seemed he was the one who’d forgotten about the dislocated shoulder. It probably served him right. “Be calm, I know.” Hand shaking, he scrubbed his palm over his already mussed curls. “Kinda hard when you can’t remember whether you completed your mission objectives or not. It’s not like there are lives on the line or anything.”

Lives meaning the pilots who kept on getting picked off by FO patrols… somehow. Nobody was sure quite how, whether they had some new tracking capabilities or a mole or what. That was what Poe’s mission had been. And now they had no way of knowing if he’d even succeeded or not.

“There are always lives on the line, Commander, and upsetting yourself isn’t going to help you recover your memories any faster.” With one last glance at the monitor set up next to Poe’s bed, she put the scanner aside. “You just need rest. The only things those ‘FO fucks’ seem to have done was bang you up and that’s not so new for you, is it, hmm? Chances are good those memories will return on their own. Now, I’m perfectly willing to release you into Mr. Solo’s care given your long, storied history with successful bacta submersions, but only if I can trust you to take it easy.”

“There’s no time.” Cursing, he hopped down from the edge of the bed. Ben didn’t miss the wobble in his step or the way his hand fisted in the mattress. “Release me or don’t, I’ll discharge myself either way.”

“Against medical advice?”

“General Organa needs to know.”

But he grimaced, no doubt imagining the write-up he’d receive if he did discharge himself. Kalonia ran a tight ship and didn’t suffer her patients’ whims lightly. If they wanted to go against her recommendations, their records would reflect it. Most of the time, that was enough to keep Poe where he was long enough to satisfy Kalonia—he took the medbay seriously, if only to set an example for the rest of his people, but Ben, watching closely, saw the flicker of defiance in his gaze and knew this time, this time he’d deem it worthwhile and to no good end that Ben could see if Ben didn’t stop him. “Poe,” he said, “just give it the night, huh? We’ll figure something out. General Organa already knows what she needs to know.”

It was a bad, bad day when Ben was the one suggesting doing the responsible thing, but Poe stilled and he thought about it. And unhappy though he may have been, that was all Ben could ask for under the circumstances. Not least of all with the wild, careworn way Poe stared at him, like he couldn’t believe this turn of events either. Ben preaching in favor of the sensible option? Who would have guessed?

He didn’t acknowledge the fact that he’d only snagged Poe’s attention due to the way his voice caught on his words and tangled with the terror he felt at what happened, what could have happened, how Poe would feel if or when he regained his memory. While Ben hadn’t even known to worry—why would he, when so many of Poe’s missions lasted days at a time—Poe’d gotten himself into enough shit to come back battered and broken. Ben couldn’t save him if he didn’t know he needed saving.

And without Poe’s testimony, who knew what might have found its way back with them. Probably nothing. Poe was too good a pilot to let anyone get enough of a drop on him to trace his movements back to the base. But Poe’s desperation… it wasn’t entirely unfounded. They just didn’t know. And that was never a good sign.

The First Order was doing something out there, something that was a danger to the base and Poe’s pilots and everyone who risked their lives every day to see them brought down. And it was entirely possible Poe’s little sojourn merely exacerbated the problem.

Swallowing back bile, he looked away. If Poe thought for a moment that Ben, too, thought the situation was dire, he’d do everything in his power to fix it, even if he hurt himself in the process.

Ben had learned a lot of lessons in his time, but he was still a selfish man and he would risk Poe’s wrath, and the safety of the base at large, by gambling that Poe had followed proper procedure at the very least.

How Ben had become the one who could make Poe back off was anyone’s guess, but when he slumped his shoulders, Ben knew he’d gotten Poe to give himself at least enough of a reprieve to stop himself from getting an official reprimand. It wasn’t worth much—Poe’d racked up an impressive array of them in his time—but they still counted, clattered about in the history of Poe’s service, blemishes he’d one day be judged for by people who didn’t know a damned thing about what the real fight was like. “Fine.” He threw up his hands as best he could. With how stiffly he was moving, his best wasn’t worth much. “I’ll take it easy.”

Kalonia’s frown twisted with wryness. “Good. I guess I can save the paperwork for another day.” More sympathetic, she said, “I know this is frustrating for you.”

He rolled his shoulder and waved her off. “Leave it, doc. It’s fine.” His fingers twitched in an aborted gesture toward Ben, propriety stilling an act Ben still sometimes found awkward and undeserved. It was only once they made it back to Poe’s quarters—ostensibly his alone, though Ben rarely bothered to go back to his own anymore—that Poe allowed himself to take Ben’s hand in his, tangle their fingers together and squeeze. His grip was weaker than usual, just a way for him to test the strength in the recently knit bones, but he relaxed into something that was almost a smile as he let go again. “Two days,” he said, wondering. “How do you just—”

Ben palmed open the door, herding Poe inside with a hand on his shoulder. The touch was almost enough to make up for the self-imposed lack in the medbay. “Don’t think about it?” he suggested, only half joking. “I don’t know. I’ve never…”

The words sounded false, asinine to his ears. Of course he didn’t know what Poe was going through and he couldn’t even begin to pretend that he did. ‘Don’t think about it,’ indeed. Great advice, that.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Poe said, too careful and cordial, a frothy deflection that might have been better suited to a diplomatic mission or a party, the kind of words you gave to someone you didn’t want to burden with the truth. That person wasn’t supposed to be Ben, with whom Poe’d never pulled a punch in his life. Poe hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the glorified pallet that constituted their bed. “I’m just gonna… do what Kalonia said, I guess.”

He didn’t even strip from the soft, oversized scrubs he’d worn in the medbay, white and textured and determined, Ben thought, to wash out everyone who wore them. “Do you want…?”

Poe waited, curious, for him to finish his thought, but everything Ben could imagine saying sounded stupid even within the confines of Ben’s mind.

“What can I do?” Ben settled on finally, ignoring the urge he felt to fiddle with the hems of his sleeves.

“Why don’t we both take it easy? You look like you’ve been through the wringer, too.”

It was an enticing invitation after so many hours spent not being near enough to Poe to judge for himself how Poe was doing. He wanted to brush his fingers over every bruise, prod lightly at bone and muscle to ensure whatever discomfort lingered was only of the mildest sort, that the bacta had done its job. It maybe wasn’t what he should have wanted, but that didn’t stop him from wanting it. Poe, of course, knew this about him and never objected. In fact, the way Poe sometimes smiled as Ben performed the most physical of inventories, he might have dared say that Poe enjoyed it, too.

But Poe wasn’t smiling now. There was still that desperate, clawing quality in his gaze from before and it felt less like Poe was worried about Ben and more like he needed to not be alone.

“I always look like this,” Ben said, beginning to shuck his tunic in silent acquiescence to the request Poe wasn’t making. It was easier to say this than to say what he really wanted to say, which was _tell me the truth, I know you’re not fine, I’m not fine_.

That got nothing out of Poe, not even a backhanded compliment. Instead, Poe hesitated, knee on the edge of the bed, his head bowed. Ben stepped toward him, hand raised, uncertain.

It shouldn’t have been this hard. It hadn’t been, not in years.

Poe didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn’t care. Instead, he climbed into bed and half-heartedly gestured for Ben to join him. Ben did as asked, slipping his arm around Poe’s shoulders. But instead of relaxing like he normally did, Poe tensed up.

“Are you still—” Ben said, tensing, too, preparing to move the moment Poe said the word.

“No, I just—it’s nothing.” And then, too obvious to be anything but forced, he seemed to melt into Ben’s embrace, head turned toward Ben, his cheek pillowed on Ben’s shoulder. But almost the moment Poe thought Ben was distracted, he tensed up again and sighed, quiet, but audible all the same. Or perhaps it was a gasp, an equal, yet opposite inhalation of breath.

If he waited Poe out…

But Ben wasn’t the sort to wait anyone out. “Poe,” he said, “what is it?”

Poe’s nails raked lightly over Ben’s stomach as his hand formed a fist against Ben’s abdomen. “I can’t remember the last two days.” Though he tried to still himself, he couldn’t quite control the way his hand shook even clenched as it was. “But I bet you could find them.”

“What are you—?” But Ben knew what Poe was saying, of course. He didn’t have to ask. And he didn’t want to. It made Ben’s skin prickle like he’d been doused in ice to even think about it. The fact that Poe was even thinking about it… he really was as desperate as Ben had thought he was. And scared and guilty, too. Ben didn’t even need the Force to sense it. The fact that he was referring, however obliquely, to something neither of them enjoyed thinking about or acknowledging was proof enough. “It’s not your fault. Nobody expects you to…”

“I expect me to,” Poe snapped. His breath brushed, warmly harsh and insistent, against Ben’s skin. The warble in his tone gave him away though; this was the last thing he wanted. “It’s my job to do everything I can to ensure the safety of this base.”

“Not that.” His own voice was so cold that it sent a thrill of fear rippling down his spine. Of all his sins, icy, razor-honed fury hadn’t ever been one of them. His anger always ran too hot and unfocused for the knife-like precision of his words now. “You don’t owe anyone—”

“I don’t care.” That warble again, tempered by rash bravery and sheer stubbornness.

What he and Poe shared was fragile at the best of times, predicated on lines in the sand neither of them crossed ever, not when they were furious or hurting or afraid. It was the one boundary they respected and, until now, they’d never so much as broached the possibility of shattering it into the same number of pieces Ben had left Poe’s mind in last time the topic came up.

Ben’s mouth pressed against the crown of Poe’s head, nothing as formal as a kiss, but near enough to it that Ben didn’t know what else to call it. No matter how much Poe begged, pleaded, or cajoled, Ben would not do this. Quiet, so much so that even he had to strain to hear himself, he said, “I can’t.”

Scoffing, Poe said, too fast, “I seem to recall you had no trouble—” He pushed himself up and leaned against the cold, duracrete wall. Closing his eyes, he tipped his chin up and sucked in a deep breath, then another, and another still like there would never be enough air to dislodge the fear that seized his lungs, his heart. “Fuck.”

He was trembling when Ben reached out to touch him, just his forearm, his skin prickling as though cold, and he flinched away from the soft, harmless brush of Ben’s fingertips. He wasn’t even doing it on purpose; there was no point here to be made. Poe was just a foolish, self-sacrificing bastard who was willing to surrender their—

No. That wasn’t fair. And somewhere beneath the layers of frustration and guilt and selfishness that stopped him from yelling at Poe to see sense, damn it, to think about what it would mean for them if he did this, he recognized that. Poe was in an untenable position and Ben, for good or ill, harbored a skill that might make a difference. At the very least, Poe thought he could make a difference, which all but sealed the deal in his eyes.

Ben tried—and didn’t entirely succeed—at ridding himself of the resentment that smouldered deep in his chest, hot enough to start a devastating wildfire if even the smallest ember caught on the wind of his emotions.

It was so very nice to know how quickly Poe could toss this thing between them aside, how little time Poe needed to get from idea to request. Had he even stopped to think about…

But of course he hadn’t. Why would he? He saw that something needed to be done and he did it and every last consequence be damned in the pursuit, maybe most especially when those consequences stood directly in his way and threatened violence against him personally.

Whatever Poe thought Ben capable of, he would be disappointed and that was the very best case scenario.

“You don’t want this,” Ben said, as kind as he knew how to be, pushing himself up to sit the way Poe was, putting a half-meter of distance between them. The duracrete, plain and unforgiving, felt cool against the back of Ben’s head and shoulder blades. He closed his eyes, too, tried to put himself into Poe’s shoes here and reach a point where he believed Poe’s mission was worth the destruction of everything else Ben had learned to hold dear, that there was an immediate threat worth giving in for.

“I don’t want a lot of things.”

Ben sighed. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” Turning his head toward the opposite wall, he chafed his arms roughly, the sound of skin rubbing against skin the only sound in the room. “I guess I do.”

“I know you think it will help, but it won’t.” Ben’s hands clenched in his lap, fingers knotting together as he stared down at them. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he was very certain all the same. Ben couldn’t give him what he wanted. “I’ll only…” _Hurt you_.

“You won’t hurt me,” Poe said, hearing the words Ben didn’t say. Even shaky, he sounded as though he believed at least that much. Managing to make himself look at Ben, he added, “I just need to know.”

 _No amount of pleading_ , he thought, disgusted with himself and with Poe for putting him in this position. If Ben didn’t do this, Poe would be furious. And if he did…

“I don’t know how to do this without…” Ben’s hand wafted, uneasy and uncertain, through the air. Ben had come to believe that there was no true Dark Side and no true Light. There were only intentions and skills that tapped into the base goodnesses and evils in the universe. This skill, as much as any other, could be used for noble purposes. And yet, knowing what Ben knew, he still abhorred it.

Through gritted teeth, Poe said, “Try.”

And so Ben, knowing better, knowing he should have said no, knowing that nothing in the galaxy was worth this, did exactly as Poe asked.

The natural defenses of Poe’s thoughts were more robust than Ben remembered, prepared for an onslaught from Kylo Ren that did not come. The equivalent of blaster bolts struck Ben’s mental conception of himself, every bit as painful as the real thing, as he slipped between memories he did not care to see. There were other ways, he was sure, of accomplishing this, ways that did not require Ben to choke the life out of Poe’s defenses when there became too many to safely wade through, but Ben had never learned them and neither Luke nor Snoke had seen fit to teach him.

When Poe whimpered, Ben almost pulled back, abandoned the destructive, pain-filled slog through Poe’s last few hours of memories, time travel of a sort Ben never wanted to engage in, as he sought out the shadowy corner of Poe’s mind where Ben hoped he would find the answer that Poe could not. It was not clouds that made it so dark there, but Ben could think of them as nothing else. Perhaps it was more like a fortress, though that, too, did not quite fit. It changed shape every time Ben scrutinized it, a gray-colorless-black-colorless-gray vacuum that never quite settled on whether it was there to obscure or defend the truth.

It did not, in the end, matter.

He didn’t range close enough to it before his heart gave out.

Getting stabbed through the back would shock anyone after all.

Ben gasped and scrabbled at his chest, feeling for a wound that was not there, expecting blood that did not form. His lungs dragged great, gulping breaths into his body and heaved on every exhalation. Coughing, throat ragged, he reached instinctively for Poe and only managed to graze his thigh as he shot to his feet, hissing through whatever discomfort he caused himself by moving so quickly.

“Fuck,” he said, so frantic Ben could hear it over the sound of his blood rushing in his ears. “I remem—shit, I have to find the general. I’ll be—I’ll come back.”

Ben reached again and this time grabbed hold of Poe’s wrist. Every inch of him protested the movement, the contact, wanted to get as far away from this situation as possible. Poe did everything he could to ignore it, but he felt it, too. Ben could tell. “Don’t ever ask me to do that again.”

Poe stilled and nodded, somber. His pain etched lines into his face that didn’t normally mar his skin and it wasn’t entirely due to the strain of Ben’s intrusion into his mind that they were there. His skin had grown sallow and clammy, washed out.

The stain of residual guilt that clung to Ben’s thoughts? It wasn’t entirely his own. Poe felt it, too, and he hesitated even despite the visceral _no, no, not again_ that Ben sensed pouring from him in waves. He was justifying it to himself even now, even while everything in him screamed to pull away from Ben’s touch, broadcasted it out into the universe, perhaps directly into Ben’s head for how visceral Ben’s understanding was of his need to get away from Ben.

“Promise me.”

Nodding, Poe squirmed free of Ben’s touch and would not meet his eyes. “I promise.” And then he was gone, for thirty minutes, an hour, Ben wasn’t sure. It could have been longer. Time seemed to stretch as he waited, his thoughts wending and winding back on themselves, and the only way to keep track of it was to count the phantom aches and throbs that worked themselves out in his body. Perhaps he could have scrounged in Poe’s drawers for the chronometer he didn’t really need or use, watch as each second clicked over to the next.

Poe’s return, when it came, was anticlimactic. The door slid open with only the barest of pneumatic _whuffs_ and Poe’s steps were quiet. It happened so gently that Ben didn’t have time to startle. One moment, Poe wasn’t there. The next, he was, awkwardly shuffling his feet in the doorway as he pulled off his boots. His gaze was shuttered and when Ben finally looked at him, his gaze darted before settling again on Ben’s face. When that became too much, he ducked his head.

Ben had forgotten he was still in those damnable scrubs.

“I take it you spoke with the general?” he asked, pushing himself up onto his elbow. Rubbing grit from his eyes, he peered at Poe, waiting.

Poe nodded. “Scrambled the rest of Black Squadron. They’re gonna take out—the First Order has been launching probe droids. They’re setting a trap for the next—” The skin around his eyes tightened and he waved his own words away as though they didn’t matter. “It’s handled.”

 _It’s handled_. That was all Poe had to say about it. _It’s handled_ , as though Ben hadn’t invaded his privacy again, hadn’t hurt Poe and been hurt in return, hadn’t done one of the few things he’d promised himself he’d never again do. What recriminations Ben saw in Poe’s eyes were small, nearly nonexistent, but he saw no sense of pride either, or accomplishment, no real gladness to have gotten exactly what he wanted. “That’s it,” Ben said, cool and clipped, mulling over Poe’s admission with prim, unhappy preciseness. _It’s handled_. Force, Poe was probably unhappy that he wasn’t the one handling it. “I’m so glad.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, affecting a lightness that Ben didn’t think he felt either. Shoulders slumping, he took a step toward the bed and then rocked back on his heels. Ben imagined this happening every time Poe took a step toward him, this reticence, this second thought, and hated it—and more than that, Poe, who’d demanded that Ben put this into motion at all and lastly himself for agreeing to it. With a more serious look on his face, he continued speaking. “Ben, I shouldn’t have—”

But Ben already knew what he was going to say. _I shouldn’t have done that_ , Ben thought in Poe’s voice, _but it worked, so who cares?_ It didn’t seem to matter to him that he couldn’t lift his eyes to Ben’s or move forward in anything more natural than the most hesitant of motions.

“It worked out,” Poe said, sharp with righteous justification, just like Ben had known he would. Whether he was trying to justify it to himself or to Ben, Ben couldn’t quite guess, but then it didn’t matter because Poe was rolling his shoulders, back straightening, and he strode again toward the bed with purpose. His gaze cleared and he forced himself to look at Ben and he repeated himself. “It worked out.”

Climbing onto the bed, he straddled Ben’s thighs and pressed his fingertips hard to the line of Ben’s jaw. “It was worth it,” he said, only a hint of desperation in his tone to suggest otherwise, less than Ben expected, less than he deserved probably, definitely less than he felt in turn.

But so long as Poe kissed him like he did now, deep and thorough and ardent, perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps it would be worth it. Perhaps Poe was right.

And perhaps it was even true this sort of thing wouldn’t happen again.

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for the idea of how Kylo’s interrogations work are pulled from _Battlefront II_. If you want to see it in action, check this out: [gameplay footage here](https://youtu.be/FDHJ0V0ZLnw?t=1m54s). Note: spoilers for endgame content. Don't watch if you don't want important plot points spoiled.


End file.
